Street Fighter II HD delay is good news for gamers

According to Super Street Fighter II HD Remix producer Rey Jimenez, the game “has turned out to be a much more difficult task” than he ever anticipated.

Jimenez outlined on the official Capcom blog some of the biggest reasons the game has taken much longer than expected, notably the newly created high definition artwork.

“As a necessary part of development, we had to outsource a lot of the work to an outside company that based their work off of Udon’s key frames. This company has an excellent reputation and ability as an outside art contractor and we were very impressed with their overall resources and their infrastructure,” Jimenez explained. “Without going into the nitty-gritty of it, the art they were producing just wasn’t up to par or schedule of what we needed. To be honest, a lot of their art was looking pretty good, but just not “good enough.” It just wouldn’t satisfy the quality bar that both Capcom and Street Fighter fans demand.”

“… we had to essentially reboot the whole art pipeline,” said Jimenez. “The character art pretty much started over from scratch with new reference art from Udon.”

Although acknowledging that the release delay “sucks”, Jimenez pointed out that there are reasons gamers should be pleased development hasn’t gone as smoothly as hoped.

“… the plus side to all this is that with the extra time needed to reboot the art pipeline, we have extra time to: a) cram in tons of cool features that weren’t planned from the onset of development and b) further refine and test features that we had planned all along,” he explained.

What this means to the final game is the inclusion of an 8-man Tournament Mode, both remixed and classic music, and the implementation of a hit box display – something hardcore players should be excited to see.

Jimenez also notes that there’s even more stuff that they won’t be announcing until a later date.

The game is still without a firm release date, but fans will be able to get access to a beta test this spring – details of which can be seen here.